Grey to blue: a year in review

Across the tropical shores of the world, boats lie dormant. Bobbing, listing, withering, moulding. Birds gather, disrespectfully gossiping up on the spreaders, shitting on the abandoned dreams of the deck below. Some boats are bound in shrink wrap, as if to protect them from the inevitable decay. In the court of nature’s wrath, the all powerful sun, wind and rain beat them down for months, years. Voiceless, no creaking of footsteps, no parting of waves below their keels. Once majestic sails lie torn and shredded, threadbare. Deep inside, ecosystems thrive. The mould and insects that sense death, take over the coffin. The ugly, grey process of decomposition takes hold.

Each one has a story. It’s a story of family or of finance. One phone call, one diagnosis. A mother or a child. The anchor of land cannot be ignored. Sailors are recalled. Life on the water, with it’s fantastic highs and extreme lows, falls away.

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A year ago today, my grey clammy skin recoiling from the harshness of mirror and light, I brushed my teeth. I gulped down coffee coloured liquid. I dressed in borrowed clothes, pulled on a thrift store pair of boots and faced the bitter cold, the slush, the highways. 

On autopilot we drove to and from suburbia to the city. Between the traffic, blurry hallways of hospitals welcomed us, inspid, assaulting all senses with the smell of bleach and urine and promising a set of heartwrenching hours ahead. It consumed me literally; entered my bones and my soul. 

It could have been any day.  Every one as grey as the last. My stomach cramped, echoing the hopelessness, the ache, the circles under my eyes. It wasn’t about me at all. But life’s knocks are blows. They wipe out families and communities and leave us all bruised and whimpering in a cold wet puddle.

My mother’s illness brought me ‘home’, only to discover that she was my home. That I am only from a place, but not OF that place.  Twenty something years away are lifetimes and lessons that add up to a stranger. A stranger in her mother’s house, weeping over the piles of things that will never be used again. Buried. 

Filling, carrying, handing over endless boxes of things in the back alleys of bleak parking lots. Wasted hot tears, spilling, heaving despair for a life that is over, despite the living breathing, suffering woman in a hospital bed some miles away.

A stranger in thrift clothing was I, living a year in turmoil, displaced and heartbroken.

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A month ago today I woke to the gentle lapping of the dinghy and the cool breeze of a Bahama spring morning. I peered into the mirror at the brown Sunkist face, wiser for the extra lines. Drenched in sunlight through the hatch above, washed the sleep from the corners of my eyes in the cramped little ‘head’, excited to step up into the day.

Turquoise bombarded my senses – swimming-pool-blue ocean waters and periwinkle skies met my gaze as I devoured each indulgent sip of rich dark coffee. The warmth entering my bones, embracing my soul. 

It could have been any day. Every one as blue as the last. I don’t keep track in terms of day names. They are all blissfully soul nurturing. There are fluffy clouds and random storms and the hugs from friends. This is all about me. It’s the tear that slips down past my sunburnt cheeks, into the ocean. Heartache blows. It’s what you carry over the sea and share it’s burden with the sky above. 

My mother’s death taught me what I always suspected. That things are useless and pointless and that it's the choices we make and the perspective we embrace that lead to exactly where we find ourselves. We can’t control the wind or whether our mother will be waiting on the other end of the phone when we need to share. It’s life’s bitter twist. It’s inevitable. Life challenges us to find the beauty.

I am not a stranger here. You can’t be a stranger in your own life. If you are living your life. 

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Shiloh had a story. She sat patiently if reluctantly bobbing between pilings, tied up and tugged by ropes, abandoned for a year. It took effort to bring her back from the brink. But there is life within her hulls again. The people who call her home know that everything is a fragile balance. There are a billion colours and smells and tastes to find and touch and taste and explore. Lemon sharks may be swimming below you, tropic birds chirping above. 

The stars shine most brightly when they are not obscured by the false lights of a city.

Stricken

As I recline on the couch, Dr Phil or Ellen or local news droning on in the background, my anemic toes stare up at me. 10 white reminders that I am not myself, I am uprooted, I am in crisis. Tanned skin retreats from crisis. Pale is the colour required.

The mirror is not my friend. Two tired eyes stare back. They are gathering baggage. Heavy, dark bags and the strain of their weight is showing. Gone is the glow, the energy, the fire that has kept me fueled for all these years. In it’s place a gaping wound. A reminder of life’s fragility. A monthly parking pass to a hospital.

My mom - the fiercely independent fireball role model of my life - lies in a bed there, in that hospital. Defenseless, vulnerable and afraid. The regal swans whom she has loved, companions by the lake’s edge, swim by. They are looking for her. They gather and make terrible noise. They cannot believe she has left them. And neither can I.

All of us have been drowned. Whisked into a dark vast cavern by a force of nature. Unexpected, uncontrollable, a stroke takes lives and knocks them sideways. Like dominoes in a storm, we all fall down.

They say it’s the most common cause of long term disability in North America. They say it’s the leading cause of death. They say someone has a stroke every 40 seconds. Those are just statistics.

They don’t say you will lose sleep. There will be tears. You will lose your independence, your free will, your health, your happiness. Your life. They can’t possibly write down what this ‘common’ occurrence will do to us all. It’s too hideous. Too morbid. Too gritty. They will tell me this post is the same. Harsh, negative. Ugly. And they will be right.

Unthinkable decisions to be made, lawyers to be consulted, forms to fill, belongings to discard, depressing facilities to be toured like holiday spas. Social workers, wheelchairs, hospital food. The smell of that. The reality is overwhelming.

How do you put this one in a box? Get it all settled and move on?! How do you protect your heart and soul from something so engulfing. Where do you find yourself again? It doesn’t exist. Not for my mother, not for me. Nothing will be the same again for any of us. And all by a tiny build up of blood, coursing through a vein, up into a brain. A tiny biological malfunction that ripples outward like an atomic bomb.

The frivolity of our lives in the sun, the coarseness of sand between my toes fades in my mind. I feel guilty at even the thought of it. Instead I reflect the grey around me. The sky cries onto the windows and her tears hit the cold lake, mixing with the weary waters of a Canadian spring day.

There is only one thing that keeps us all going. Pushing through the sludge. It’s the hug from my nephew. Warm, soft, beautiful in it’s innocence. It’s the hand squeeze from JW at the end of a trying day.

The friends of my mom who bend and stretch and reach out, far beyond what I could have imagined. It’s a testament to the amazing character of Jan. My mother is so loved. And it is love that shines through. It has proven to be the only force stronger than tragedy.

It’s what allows my sister and I to find laughter somewhere in all of this. Just to know that we are here for each other, for our mother.

So for now it’s the currency I’m working with. It’s the boat in a hurricane. And I’m just trying to hold on.